Executive Mayor, West Rand District Municipality,
Members of the Mayoral Committee, City of Johannesburg,
Chairperson of Metrobus Board and Board Members,
MD of Sandown Motors and Busmark,
MD of Metrobus,
Ladies and gentlemen.
It gives me great pleasure to give this address today and thank you for the invitation to part of this exciting event. Today we are seeing the Gauteng Province and City of Johannesburg’s economic plans in action. These plans commit us to advance job creation, including in green jobs and the bus manufacturing sector.
This is aligned with the National Development Plan, which calls for mutual benefits between sustainable development and reducing carbon emissions, increasing employment and reducing inequality. It is consistent with the provincial strategy, which states the Gauteng city-region will make the transition towards clean, innovative, resource efficient, low carbon technologies and infrastructure.
I am, therefore, delighted to be part of the process of officially launching the new dual fuel buses, which contribute to these objectives. It is a step in the right direction and sets us off on an innovative pathway based on clean and green buses.
The manufacturing of these green busses locally have created a number of jobs. I am told that while the chassis and engines were imported they were assembled in East London, leading to the creation of 20 temporary jobs. Secondly, the bus bodies were built at this Busmark factory and while the DTI requires bus body builders to use 80 percent local content, the local content in these buses is 96 percent. This means that a further 280 jobs were created in this factory.
Thirdly, the buses will use a combination of diesel and gas. This will create new opportunities for the creation of jobs in the biogas sector. Biogas can come from a range of sources, including from sewerage, landfill sites and biocrops. The city of Johannesburg is presently piloting growing biocrops in some areas south of Johannesburg, which is also leading to job creation.
By December this year, the city will have 181 buses operating on dual fuel. With a minimum of six jobs being created to fuel one bus for a year, we are looking at no less than 600 jobs for every 100 buses running on biocrop gas. In addition, jobs will also be created in the maintenance of these buses. The industry maintenance standard talks to a ratio of 1 artisan to 9 buses. The acquisition of the 150 buses will create 17 jobs (artisans and assistants) and 5 in the gas related activities.
Lastly, this is an innovative project. I understand that this project has been developed with innovators from the Vaal University of Technology. Metrobus is working with the University of Johannesburg, which will monitor the performance of the dual fuel busses and advise on ways to improve the performance of these busses. Such innovation provides learnerships and creative learning experiences for our students.
Job creation, especially for young people, is critical if we are going to end the scourge of poverty and inequality. Jobs do more than give people a source of income to feed and clothe themselves and their families. Gainful employment gives people self-esteem and self-confidence and a positive outlook for the future.
This is very important and it is one of the reasons why the City of Johannesburg has put programmes like Jozi@Work at the forefront of its priorities. As the Gauteng city-region we are committed to job intensive solutions to each of our development programmes to achieve greater participation of the youth in our economy.
As mentioned by other speakers, this project is not only about job creation. It is also about contributing to reduced air pollution and carbon emissions. I understand that the City of Johannesburg has signed an international declaration led by C40 cities against climate change, wherein we have committed to soot free buses. These buses are well on the way to being soot free!
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the manufacturers and their team for partnering with us to promote local content, green transport and innovation. I hope that our partnership will continue as we finalise the roll out of the buses and monitor them. These new dual fuel buses enable us to meet our objectives of creating an inclusive, job-resilient and competitive economy that harnesses the potential of its citizens, and supports the building of a smart, environmentally sound and resilient city and province.
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